hello, could you go to the firefox menu ≡ > help ? > troubleshooting information, copy the contents of that page and paste them here into a reply on the forum? this might give us a clue what is going on...

dicke said

as above

I hope this is in a suitable format for you all--- if not please let me know how you'd like it formatted!

{

 "application": {
   "name": "Firefox",
   "version": "38.0.1",
   "buildID": "20150513174244",
   "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0",
   "updateChannel": "release",
   "supportURL": "https://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/38.0.1/WINNT/en-GB/",
   "numTotalWindows": 1,
   "numRemoteWindows": 0,
   "remoteAutoStart": false
 },
 "crashes": {
   "submitted": [],
   "pending": 0
 },
 "modifiedPreferences": {
   "browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run": false,
   "browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max": false,
   "browser.cache.disk.capacity": 358400,
   "browser.cache.frecency_experiment": 3,
   "browser.download.importedFromSqlite": true,
   "browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion": 7,
   "browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID": "20150513174244",
   "browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone": "38.0.1",
   "browser.startup.homepage": "http://home.aeroflex.com/",
   "browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID": "20150513174244",
   "dom.mozApps.used": true,
   "extensions.lastAppVersion": "38.0.1",
   "media.gmp-eme-adobe.lastUpdate": 1432197738,
   "media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate": 1432197740,
   "media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version": "1.4",
   "media.gmp-eme-adobe.version": "9",
   "media.gmp-manager.lastCheck": 1432197726,
   "media.gmp-manager.buildID": "20150513174244",
   "network.cookie.prefsMigrated": true,
   "network.predictor.cleaned-up": true,
   "places.database.lastMaintenance": 1432199916,
   "places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages": 104673,
   "plugin.importedState": true,
   "plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types": "application/pdf",
   "privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs": true,
   "storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite": 1432199916,
   "storage.vacuum.last.index": 0
 },
 "lockedPreferences": {},
 "graphics": {
   "numTotalWindows": 1,
   "numAcceleratedWindows": 1,
   "windowLayerManagerType": "Direct3D 11 WARP",
   "windowLayerManagerRemote": true,
   "adapterDescription": "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter",
   "adapterVendorID": "0x8086",
   "adapterDeviceID": "0x0102",
   "adapterSubsysID": "04f51028",
   "adapterRAM": "Unknown",
   "adapterDrivers": "vga framebuf vga256 vga64k",
   "driverVersion": "6.1.7600.16385",
   "driverDate": "6-21-2006",
   "adapterDescription2": "",
   "adapterVendorID2": "",
   "adapterDeviceID2": "",
   "adapterSubsysID2": "",
   "adapterRAM2": "",
   "adapterDrivers2": "",
   "driverVersion2": "",
   "driverDate2": "",
   "isGPU2Active": false,
   "direct2DEnabled": false,
   "directWriteEnabled": false,
   "directWriteVersion": "6.2.9200.17292",
   "direct2DEnabledMessage": [
     "blockedDriver"
   ],
   "webglRendererMessage": [
     "blockedDriver"
   ],
   "info": {
     "AzureCanvasBackend": "skia",
     "AzureSkiaAccelerated": 0,
     "AzureFallbackCanvasBackend": "cairo",
     "AzureContentBackend": "cairo"
   }
 },
 "javaScript": {
   "incrementalGCEnabled": true
 },
 "accessibility": {
   "isActive": false,
   "forceDisabled": 0
 },
 "libraryVersions": {
   "NSPR": {
     "minVersion": "4.10.8",
     "version": "4.10.8"
   },
   "NSS": {
     "minVersion": "3.18.1 Basic ECC",
     "version": "3.18.1 Basic ECC"
   },
   "NSSUTIL": {
     "minVersion": "3.18.1",
     "version": "3.18.1"
   },
   "NSSSSL": {
     "minVersion": "3.18.1 Basic ECC",
     "version": "3.18.1 Basic ECC"
   },
   "NSSSMIME": {
     "minVersion": "3.18.1 Basic ECC",
     "version": "3.18.1 Basic ECC"
   }
 },
 "userJS": {
   "exists": false
 },
 "extensions": [
   {
     "name": "IDS_SS_NAME",
     "version": "IDS_SS_VERSION",
     "isActive": false,
     "id": "{D19CA586-DD6C-4a0a-96F8-14644F340D60}"
   },
   {
     "name": "Skype Click to Call",
     "version": "7.3.16540.9015",
     "isActive": false,
     "id": "{82AF8DCA-6DE9-405D-BD5E-43525BDAD38A}"
   }
 ],
 "experiments": []

}

thank you for following up - about the slowness issue please try installing this graphics driver on your system: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24695/Intel-HD-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-8-1-32bit

also see: Firefox is slow after updating to Firefox 38

Oh, MY GOD!!! That has brought it back to life .... big time . Microseconds to load a page instead of 30 seconds!!!!! To be honest I downloaded the 64 bit version of the video driver as recommended by Dells tool (autodect thingy) ... but the idea was right.

I'm really surprised that the driver makes such a difference! :-)